perceive the importance of the subject, and are not delivered over by a supine neglect to authority, are however deterred by an unreasonable timidity from the use of their own judgments, and are determined by an affection of their minds, in opposition to common sense, to deliver themselves over to the prevalent authority whatever that be. Thus, they who invade the reason of mankind triumph not by their own strength, but by the prejudices of the invaded. Their success may be compared to that of a certain prince who placed, it is said, cats and other animals, adored by the Egyptians, in the front of his army when he invaded that people. A reverence for these phantoms made the Egyptians lay down their arms, and become an easy conquest.

This timidity is the less excusable, because the divine wisdom, as I hinted above, has been pleased to manifest to us a rule of inquiry and judgment in matters of divine philosophy and natural religion, that is sure, as far as it goes, and it goes most certainly as far as the same wisdom intended that our inquiries and judgments should proceed. It serves at once both to direct and limit them. God has shown these great objects to us in a light reflected from his works, and proportioned to our nature. He has shown them in no other, in the ordinary course of his providence. The way therefore to avoid fantastical, and to attain some degree of real knowledge concerning them, is to apply ourselves to a careful observation of the phenomena of nature, corporeal and intellectual, as nature is commonly distinguished. The true foundations of natural theology must be laid in natural philosophy. So they have been laid, in part at least, by ancient and modern theists, and by the latter especially, since the wonderful discoveries that have been made by the improvement of experimental philosophy; discoveries that might send the wisest men of antiquity, sacred and profane, could they arise from the dead with all their wisdom and all their learning about them, once more to school.

The foundations* of theism have been laid wider, but they

* This note is added a great number of years after I had written what is contained in the text referred to, and after my opinions concerning the Supreme Being, and the proofs of his existence, had been established in my mind; because I have lately found, in the history of the royal academy of sciences at Berlin for the year 1746, a dissertation written by a very ingenious man, a very good philosopher, and one with whom I have been long acquainted, that I cannot approve on many accounts. His avowed design is to deduce the proofs of God's existence from the general, not any particular laws of nature, and to deduce those of motion and rest metaphysically from the attributes of the Supreme intelligence.

To make way for this proof, he rejects or endeavors to weaken every other proof, on this pretence, that the attempt to establish truth on false reasonings VOL. III.-33

wanted no solidity before these discoveries. These new proofs, nay all proofs beyond those which every observing man is able to draw even from an unphilosophical view of the system of nature, are proofs “ex abundantia." I honor most sincerely those philosophers who have endeavored to raise the thoughts of men,

is the greatest injury which can be done to it. I shall not take on me to examine his hypothesis how little soever I like the deduction of a physical hypothesis from metaphysical principles, instead of establishing general, abstract, or if you please, metaphysical axioms on particular experiments and observation.

Mr. Maupertuis lays no weight on the famous argument of Des Cartes taken from the idea of an infinite, all-perfect Being, which he supposes to be in the human mind; and Maupertuis is in the right. He says little on the assumed universal consent of mankind to this great and fundamental truth, and he is not in the wrong. This consent is not such as it stands represented by many. It is general enough to show the proportion which this truth bears to the universal reason of mankind, and I think it would prove no more if it was still more general. The actual existence of such a Being cannot be fairly deduced from it. He will not insist, he says, on the argument which may be drawn from the intelligence whereof we are conscious, to a first intelligence, infinite, and eternal, which is the original of all intelligence, and the first cause of all things; and yet I apprehend that he has given us none so good by the help of metaphysics, and mathematics, as this, which is plain and obvious to the conception of every rational creature.

That some theists have reasoned weakly from the phenomena of nature to the existence of God is, I believe, true, as I am sure it is true that others would have inade the doctrine of final causes ridiculous, if any thing could make it so, by the ridiculous application of it on every unworthy and trifling occasion. But we must not learn from hence to despise all those arguments which ancient philosophers drew from the beauty, order, and disposition of the universe, on this smart conceit, that they knew too little of nature to have a right to admire it.

He is not satisfied neither with those which Newton, and much less with those which other naturalists have drawn from the same phenomena. If he cites those of Newton, it is only to show how weak and inconclusive even these are. Newton thought that the uniform motion of the planets proved itself necessarily to have been directed by choice, not by chance, and he shows the great probability of this doctrine. But then he thinks there remains probability enough on the other side, to hinder us from saying that this uniformity must have been necessarily the effect of choice, though it should be granted agreeably to Newton's system, that all the celestial bodies being drawn towards the sun, move in a vacuum. On the other hand he advances, that the force of Newton's argument being founded alone on the impossibility of assigning a physical cause of this uniformity in his hypothesis, it will have no force with other philosophers. The uniformity of these motions will not appear inexplicable to those who admit a fluid matter, in which the planets are hurried round, or by which their motion is moderated. On this foot we are not reduced to the alternative of supposing either chance, or choice, and such an uniformity of motion will prove the existence of God no more than any other motion impressed on matter. This Maupertuis says. But till the physical cause of the uniform motion of the planets has been explained intelligibly by the hypothesis of a fluid, we must remain where we were, and have recourse in one case, as well as in the other, to choice, or chance.

by these discoveries, from the phenomena up to the author of nature, instead of amusing the world, like many others, with metaphysical abstractions. But yet I think, that we wanted neither a Boyle, nor a Ray nor a Derham, nor a Newyntit to convince us of the self-existence of an intelligent Being, the first cause of all things; and I am sure that we are much to blame if we want a Bentley, or a Clarke, to put us in mind, for in truth

This philosopher thinks that the argument, drawn by Newton from the formation of animals, has no more strength than the former. He asks, whether, if the uniformity of some be a proof on one side, the infinite variety of others will not be a proof on the other side? Now surely these proofs are so far from being contradictory, that they coincide. The eagle, the fly, the stag, the snail, the whale, and the oyster are very different animals no doubt; and the immense variety of the different species of animals appropriated to dif ferent elements and purposes, displays the magnificence of the animal world, and the infinite power of its author, as the uniformity of all those of the same species shows the design and wisdom of that Being who created them, and appropriated them to the same elements, and to the same purposes. When we compare an eagle to a fly, we find a proof of one. When we compare an an eagle to an eagle, we find a proof of the other. In short the objection is founded in cavil, not in argument.

Mr. Maupertuis proceeds, and admits, but admits as if it were for argument's sake alone, that the proportion of the different parts and organs of animals to their wants, carries a more solid appearance; and he judges that they reason very ill, who assert that the uses to which these parts and organs are applied, were not the final causes of them, but that they are so applied, because the animal is so made. Chance gave eyes and ears, and since we have them, we make use of them to see and hear. He thinks however it may be said, that, chance having produced an immense number of individuals, those of them whose parts and organs were proportioned to their wants, have subsisted, whilst those who wanted this proportion, have perished and disappeared. Those who had no mouth, for instance, could not eat, and live; those who wanted the organs of generation could not perpetuate their species: and thus from the present state of things theists draw an argument, which will appear fallacious, when it is applied to the possible original of things.

To ridicule the proofs of this kind, he asks, a little too triumphantly, what it signifies to discover appearances of order and proportion, if after this discovery we are stopped in our reasoning by some untoward conclusion? He instances in the serpent, who can neither walk nor fly, and yet saves himself from the pursuit of other animals by the flexibility of his body, which enables him to crawl away faster than many of them can follow him. The cold of the winter would chill him to death, if the form of his body, and the slippery smoothness of his skin, did not enable him likewise to creep through holes that hide him under the ground. This is the discovery. The untoward conclusion follows, and he asks, to what purpose does all this serve? Why truly to none but the preservation of an animal, whose bite is sufficient to kill a man. Thus the philosopher endeavors to destroy one proof of God's existence by begging the same question as the divine begs, when he would prove that God is unjust, because there is either physical or moral evil in the world; that is, by assuming man to be the final cause of the creation.

The great and respectable persons, such as Father Malebranche, whose authority Maupertuis cites against the order observed in the construction of the universe, and who were at loss to comprehend how it could be the work

they do no more, of the existence of such a Being. In short natural theology rests on better foundation than authority of any kind, and the duties of natural religion, and the sins against it, are held out to us by the constitution of our nature, and by daily experience, in characters so visible, that he who runs may read them.

These revelations, for such they may be properly called, are made to the reason of mankind; and the same reason that collects them from the face of nature, is able to propagate the knowledge of them, and to find means of enforcing, as far as the general imperfection of our nature, and particular contingent circum

of a Being infinitely wise and powerful, built their objections on the same assumption, and ran as he observes, into many absurd systems. But I waive entering any farther here into the consideration of this assumption, and the use that is made of it, since I have taken occasion to speak fully about it in another place.

The criticism he makes on that expression which closes the first of Mr. Pope's ethic epistles, "whatever is, is right," cannot be maintained. The proposition is not advanced as an argument to prove the existence of God, nor as a profession of faith, “un act de foi." I presume Mr. Pope meant it as a reasonable consequence of what he supposed already proved, and that when design and wisdom were so evidently marked in all the works of God which are objects of human observation and knowledge, it became his creatures to conclude that the same wisdom and designs were employed in the whole, though human observation and knowledge cannot reach to the whole; and therefore that he was justified, as he was most certainly, in pronouncing that "whatever is, is right." To say that this axiom tends to submit all things to a fatal necessity, is not true. To say that it establishes submission and resignation to the Divine Providence, in opposition to the pride and presumption of philosophers and divines, is true. It is a truth which no man should be ashamed to own and which every rational creature should be ashamed to contradict.

Maupertuis himself admits enough to establish this truth, when he admits that intelligence and design are perceivable in a multitude of the phenomena; and yet he does not give up the point. It is not enough, he says, to prove intelligence and design. To prove the wisdom of God, we must penetrate into the objects to which this intelligence and design were directed. Ability in the execution is insufficient. To show his wisdom, we must prove his motives to have been reasonable. To what purpose do we admire that regularity with which all the planets move the same way, almost in the same plane; and in orbits nearly alike, if we do not see that it is better that they should move so than otherwise, that is, if we have not discovered the sufficient reason that Leibnitz requires in all cases where things may be done more ways than one? A reasonable man may content himself, without this sufficient reason, in many cases, and Leibnitz blundered greviously when he pretended to have found it in some. I doubt Maupertuis has not succeeded better in deducing the first and universal laws of nature from the attributes of an all-wise, and all-powerful Being, in order to show, that since these laws, which are observed in the universe, are the very same which such attributes must have produced, such a Being must exist, and be the author of these laws. Happily we have no want of this demonstration,

stances admit, a conduct suitable to them. But men have not been contented to do this. They have imagined, or they have found in the frailty of the human nature, and the imperfection of the human state, an apparent necessity of going farther; of adding art to nature, falsehood to truth, and their own inventions for divine communications. In order to make the imposition pass, they have set authority in the place of reason. The religion of nature, and therefore of the God of nature, is simple and plain: it tells us nothing which our reason is unable to comprehend, and much less any thing which is repugnant to it. Natural religion and reason are always agreed, they are always the same, and the whole economy of God's dispensations to man is of a piece. But religions, founded in the pretended revelations we speak of here, grow voluminous and mysterious, oppose belief to knowledge, and when they cannot stand a reasonable examination, escape from reason by assuming that they are above it. Many such religions have appeared in the world. We Christians reject them all not only because they carry most evident marks of imposture, but because there can be no more than one true revelation, and that is undoubtedly the revelation we acknowledge; for choosing of which, however, and for rejecting the others, we must confess that we had no reason at all, or we must confess that the truth of a revelation is an object of reason, and to be tried by it.

Religions, instituted by men who thought themselves inspired when they were only mad, or by men who were thought to be inspired when they were only cheats, rest on the mere authority of their founder, maintained and improved by his disciples, and their successors. Reason had no share in examining the original pretended revelation, nor has much in examining the descent of the tradition that preserves it. How could reason have any share in examining and controlling the first, on which the last, and all the consequences of an imposture depend, among men ignorant and credulous, or who were prepared by superstition to believe revelation no uncommon event? The enthusiast was not enough in his senses to reflect, that in order to be assured he had a revelation from God, it was necessary he should have not only a lively inward sentiment of the divine truth that he supposed revealed to him, but also a clear and distinct perception of the time and manner in which this supernatural operation was performed. The impostor was enough in his senses to know, that no one was able to prove he had not the revelations he pretended to have; because no man is able any more to perceive the perceptions of another man's mind, however occasioned, than to see an outward object by the eyes, or to hear a sound by the ears, of another. Believers in men of both these characters were